This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: China View
Mar 6, 2009
China will establish a national protection center for ancient murals in June in the northwestern province of Gansu to improve the protection for the heritage, a researcher said Friday.
A total of 34 million yuan (about 4.9 million U.S. dollars) will be poured into the project based at Dunhuang Academy, an institute specializing in the protection of grottoes and the restoration of murals and cultural relics, said Wang Xudong, the academy's deputy chief.
The investment
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2009
With a business empire built on alcohol and a reputation for being the 'King of Good Times', Vijay Mallya's life couldn't be further removed from that of Mahatma Gandhi.
But he was hailed a hero in India after vowing to donate the independence leader's spectacles, sandals and watch to the nation after buying them for $1.8 million (£1.3m) at a New York auction.
The owner of United Breweries, whose flagship brand in Kingfisher beer, and Kingfisher Airlines said that he
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 6, 2009
Sir Isaac Newton's death mask, funeral effigies from the South Pacific and the body maps of HIV sufferers are featured in an exhibition.
The collection at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge explores how people around the world have viewed the human body throughout history.
The museum claims it will be the most ambitious show in its 125 years.
Source: AP
Mar 6, 2009
William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical whose past made him a lightning rod in the 2008 presidential campaign, said Thursday that fired Colorado professor Ward Churchill became the victim of a "witch hunt" after comparing Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.
"There's no doubt in my mind he was persecuted because of his politics," Ayers said before appearing with Churchill at a student rally on academic freedom at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Source: Chicago Tribune
Mar 6, 2009
After word spread around campus that St. Xavier University associate professor Graham Peck had discovered an unknown sliver of history, a student proclaimed Peck himself part of history. Colleagues were stopping to pat him on the back.
The response surprised him because Peck's historic discovery amounted to noticing a newspaper article. But he was keen enough to recognize that the article is a doozy.
Published Oct. 6, 1854, in the Missouri Republican, it is a staggerin
Source: NYT
Mar 6, 2009
The job market is getting ever closer to the depths that it reached in 1982.
Since the start of 2008, the economy has lost jobs at a steeper rate than at any other point in 50 years. That hadn’t been true until today’s report. But the 651,000 job losses in February — together with 161,000 additional job losses in previous months, a result of Labor Department revisions announced today — means that the decline is worse than it was at any point during the deep recessions of the mid-197
Source: BBC
Mar 6, 2009
The Chinese government has denied any involvement in bidding at an auction in Paris for two bronze artworks which it says were looted from Beijing in 1860.
A Chinese collector bought the heads of a rabbit and a rat for 15m euros ($19m; £13m) each, when fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's collection was sold.
The buyer, Cai Mingchao, has refused to pay, as an "act of patriotism".
The official Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying wha
Source: BBC
Mar 6, 2009
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, has given some of his strongest criticism yet of the politics of modern Russia.
He says the United Russia party of the current Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, behaves like the old-style Communists.
He also said Russia's judicial system was not properly constitutional and dismissed members of its parliament as not truly independent.
Mr Gorbachev was speaking as the countries of Eastern and Central Eu
Source: Reuters
Mar 6, 2009
The son of an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls impersonated other experts in order to further his father's views on the 2000-year-old documents, New York prosecutors said.
During a six-month period in 2008, Raphael Haim Golb, whose father Norman Golb is a University of Chicago professor of Jewish history, created dozens of Internet aliases in the names of individuals who were active in Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship.
Norman Golb has taken the position the scrolls were pro
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 6, 2009
Here's a little-known fact about Thomas Jefferson: He had a thing for mammoths, and even kept a collection of their bones in the White House.
So it seems strangely fitting that workers unearthed a 500,000-year-old mammoth skull and two tusks last month while excavating in downtown San Diego for the new campus of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law.
"It seemed bizarre at first, but when we heard about Thomas Jefferson's fascination with the mammoth, the coincidence w
Source: http://www.mgwashington.com
Mar 5, 2009
Endangered Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battle sites, including locations throughout the South, could get federal preservation grants under a bill passed this week by the House.
“There’s a fundamental misconception that the American Revolution and War of 1812 took place only in the Northeast,” explained the bill’s sponsor, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Rush Holt.
“In truth, the story of the American Revolution and the War of 1812 crisscrosses 33 states, from New York
Source: St. Petersburg Times -- politifact.com
Mar 5, 2009
Not content to emulate Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, Republican icons for whom President Obama has expressed admiration in the past, Obama has aligned himself with a third GOP hero on the issue of health care.
"The problems we face today are a direct consequence of actions that we failed to take yesterday," Obama said, opening a health care conference in the East Room of the White House on March 5. "Since Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform nearly a century a
Source: BBC
Mar 5, 2009
"There is no beginning without an end, but you will pay me back," reads an engraving on the wall of a dark and humid room in the basement of a government building in Bolivia's administrative capital, La Paz.
Next to it, stains of blood drawing four fingertips seem like grim blemishes, not at all adornments.
Bolivia is unearthing this dark part of its past.
The left-wing government of Evo Morales has recently discovered what his government calls"the horror chambers" - torture cells
Source: http://www.patrick.af.mil
Mar 5, 2009
PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- This year, we are honoring the women who have led the way in saving our planet. The National Women's History Project has elected to feature Rachel Carson as "the iconic model of the theme." She is but one of many women with a passion to do what it takes, to overcome obstacles in order to preserve what is entrusted to us.
Rachel Carson attempted to define the impact people have had on this beautiful blue planet in her book Silent Spring. She
Source: VOA
Mar 5, 2009
Russia has issued the first of three volumes of documents on the Soviet Union's catastrophic famine of the early 1930s. Russian officials claim the widespread starvation was the result misguided Kremlin policies, but in Ukraine the famine is considered an act of genocide.
The first of three volumes on the Soviet famine of the early 1930s consists of about 6,000 documents, many recently declassified by Russian authorities. The publication follows decades when the very mention of the
Source: US News & World Report
Mar 5, 2009
It's not a perfect measure, but it's a useful one—the 100-day standard for gauging presidential effectiveness. The underlying truth is that presidents tend to be most effective when they first take office, when their leadership style seems fresh and new, when the aura of victory is still powerful, and when their impact on Congress is usually at its height. There is nothing magic about the number, and many presidential aides over the years have complained that it is an artificial yardstick. But i
Source: Persian Journal
Mar 5, 2009
Iranian archeologists have unearthed an ancient cylinder seal dating to at least 3,500 years ago in Iran's northern Mazandaran Province. Archeological excavations at the Kelar Mound in the north of Iran have resulted in the discovery of a cylinder seal which dates back to the Neolithic Era; it is decorated with a drawing of a goat.
Further excavations and Carbon-14 studies on the relic are expected to reveal more precise information. Oxford scientists have determined exact dates of
Source: AP
Mar 5, 2009
A concerned George H.W. Bush saluted Houston surgeons and thanked his fellow presidents for their calls Thursday after former first lady Barbara Bush underwent successful open heart surgery to replace her aortic valve.
"I've been a nervous wreck about it," the former president said, choking back tears a day after his wife spent 2 1/2 hours getting a replacement valve from a pig at Houston's Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center.
Source: JTA
Mar 5, 2009
The Vatican has produced another document to bolster its assertion that Pope Pius XII worked behind the scenes to save Jews during World War II.
Vatican Radio on Wednesday said a 1943 document found in a convent in Rome listed the names of 24 people who were to be sheltered by the nuns there in accordance with the pope's desire.
"The Holy Father wants to save his children, also the Jews, and orders that hospitality be given to these persecuted [people] in the monas
Source: AP
Mar 5, 2009
A bomb exploded Thursday at the mausoleum of a 17th century Sufi poet in northwestern Pakistan, underscoring the gulf between hard-line Muslims and those in the region who follow a traditional, mystical brand of Islam.
A letter delivered three days before the attack to the management of the mausoleum of Sufi poet Rehman Baba on the outskirts of Peshawar warned against its promotion of "shrine culture," said Sahibzada Mohammad Anees, a top government official in the city.
